


fuck me, im falling apart

by CallicoKitten



Category: Jurassic Park (Movies), Jurassic World (2015)
Genre: Accidental Therapy, Ethical Dilemmas, F/M, Gen, Panic Attacks, Post-Movie(s), claire is my fave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 08:21:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4256235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallicoKitten/pseuds/CallicoKitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here's the thing: Claire never really had much of an interest in dinosaurs.</p><p>She remembers watching the news stories on the original park, remembers her Mom tutting and saying, I told you so, didn't I tell you so, Claire-bear? Nothing good can come of messing with things that shouldn't be messed with. </p><p>Now, sitting in the courtroom, watching grainy footage of screaming people, of Zara being caught, being dropped and caught again, watching Zara as the mosasaurus' jaws clamp shut, she thinks her mom was right.</p><p>-</p><p>in which claire wants to move on with her life, but life has other plans</p>
            </blockquote>





	fuck me, im falling apart

**Author's Note:**

> title from sufjan stevens shadow of the cross
> 
> ive been writing this for like two weeks and it doesnt seem to be going anywhere so have at it y'all

Here's the thing: Claire never really had much of an interest in dinosaurs.

She remembers watching the news stories on the original park, remembers her Mom tutting and saying, _I told you so, didn't I tell you so, Claire-bear? Nothing good can come of messing with things that shouldn't be messed with._

Now, sitting in the courtroom, watching grainy footage of screaming people, of Zara being caught, being dropped and caught again, watching Zara as the mosasaurus' jaws clamp shut, she thinks her mom was right.

(She remembers not even thinking of Zara, not during the attack or in the aftermath, not until Gray tugged on her sleeve with wide-eyes and whispered, _I'm sorry about your assistant, aunt Claire._ )

She supposes they should consider themselves lucky; Zara was the only non-InGen/Masrani casualty. There were broken bones and spines and PTSD but only Zara's family ended up with a bouquet and a condolence letter (and a sizable compensation.)

That's where this all started, really.

Zara's mother, with her startling blue eyes and her father, stern and grey, banding together with the victims, with the families of the control units, it starts as a law suit and becomes so much more.

It makes Claire want to retch, want to scream.

(But, she thinks - she knows, if it had been Karen who ended up the bouquet and the _sorry for your loss_ , she would fight for this. She would fight for her.

And if - heaven forbid - it had been Gray or Zach or both of them, she'd be right there with her.

Hell, she'd carry out the sentence herself.)

It makes Claire want to heave because here she is: charcoal suit, hair and make-up immaculate (stomach roiling, heart pounding) here she is watching people scream and cry and die and she is defending the creatures that did it. She is defending the monsters she and hers created.

And more than this, she is defending them for a man that two months ago she would have told you she hated.

-

It all starts with a documentary.

Hammond signs over the rights and ownership of the Islands to Masrani the year Claire starts working there and dies a few months later. They know there's no way they'll get planning permission for a park without drumming up some interest so in goes the documentary crew (with as much security as they can afford - of course.)

The documentary series is a hit, wins an Oscar and several other awards Claire had never heard of. David Attenborough does the narration for it and before they know it they've got their first investors.

It takes five years for her and her team to put together the park.

Five years of scratching backs and wetting palms and donating as and when. Five years of signature gathering, of finding experts not swayed by Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm and convincing everyone that the park would be safe. Five years of the most rigorous safety checks and training and drills. Five years of building and designing and planning and careful advertising.

And then another year to round up the animals, to get set up. A year of experts and animals rights groups visiting, signing off on things.

Claire spends six years of her life building Jurassic World and by the time they open they're already fully booked for a year in advance and she's wealthy enough to buy her own dinosaur infested island.

Owen Grady arrives on the island one year in to the building of the park. Claire has absolutely nothing to do with this.

She goes on one date with him because she lets herself fall for the slight drawl to his accent and his cocky smirk. He makes an ass of himself, Claire never brings it up again and Grady continues to be an annoying little feature in her life that she only has to see on special occasions.

-

Seven years and several catastrophes later, she's here holding Owen's hand as he shakes his way through nightmares and struggles to find his feet again.

It's funny, she thinks, that on the island he always seemed the more stable of the two of them. On the island her life was all about control, all about numbers and spreadsheets and knowing which investors liked which colour and drink and whether or not they were liable to make a pass at her and she always felt a little like a hamster on a wheel going too fast.

If she stopped she'd go tumbling off.

Owen though, he was always there with his easy grin saying, _it wouldn't kill you to take a day off, you know._

But now he's a wreck.

(And yeah, she's a wreck too, she jerks awake from nightmares about teeth and broken glass and chasing Zach and Gray through stampeding herds and raptor forests but if she's a car crash Owen's a fucking train derailment.)

It takes Claire longer than it probably should to work out that he's lost.

Lost without the island, without the raptors, without his pack.

For Claire after the first round of lawsuits and trials it's business as usual (sans dinosaurs obviously) it's back to spreadsheets and numbers and smiling for the right people. She's a senior employee of a company that's just lost their CEO she doesn't have time for a break down and she might not ever be fine again but she's on her way, she's passable at least.

At first she's sure Owen's going to leave. She's sure all he sees when he looks at her is the monster that signed off on Indominus, the monster that didn't look too closely at what her own Dr Frankenstein was stitching together under her nose but he doesn't because he has nowhere else to go.

( _You know that's not true,_ he says, against her forehead - she's drunk, beyond wrecked and maybe she's said a little too much and she feels guilty, so guilty. He's the one having a hard time, not her. She should be comforting him.

_I'm here because I want to be. I'm here because I love you._

Her breath hitches at that and she wants to say it back but she doesn't.

She can't.

 _I love you,_ he says, presses gentle little kisses against her skin. _I love you, I love you, I love you._ He says until her breath evens out.)

It's almost enough to make her consider getting him a dog (and she _hates_ dogs) at least that way he'd have someone to be with when she wasn't around.

Maybe she should be grateful Zara's family started the campaign. It gave Owen something to fight for at least.

-

"Do you think they'll be okay?" She hears Gray ask Owen on the ferry back to the mainland.

"Sure, buddy," Owen says without hesitation. "They did it before, right? On Isla Sorna they're still roaming wild."

"Well, yeah, but the ones in the park were bred there. They don't know how to look after themselves."

She listens as Owen explains that the only animals they had to feed were the T.Rex, the raptors and the mosasaurus and that aside from the mosasaur the others would fine.

"That T.Rex," Owen says, "She's been around since the first park, you know that? She was fine all those years on her own, wasn't she?"

Gray sighs, "I guess..."

Claire doesn't really get how Gray can worry about the dinosaurs after all that. Later she'll ask him and he'll frown at her, "It wasn't their fault, Aunt Claire. They didn't know any better. They were probably just frightened."

-

"It was a gamble Ms Dearing," The board tells her. "It was always a gamble and now with this latest tragedy... Well, we just don't think we can risk reopening. You understand."

They seem to expect her to be upset, to argue, to fight but honestly, all she feels is relief.

-

The first call comes through when she's in a meeting. She excuses herself politely, tells Owen she'll call back and turns her phone off.

They've been back six months now, set themselves up in a cushy condo paid for by Masrani. Claire's overseeing a few smaller projects and Owen's volunteering at an animal rehabilitation centre (constantly bombarding her with photos of dogs and cats and the occasional rodent accompanied by the message _please_? Claire always says no, not out of cruelty but out of the knowledge that if she says yes once it'll never stop.)

It's not much but it's the first sign she's seen that he's moving on.

After the meeting she turns it on to find sixteen missed calls from Owen.

She calls him back, horrible scenarios playing out in her mind and he answers with, "They want to blow it up, Claire. They want to kill them all."

-

Owen, she learns, hasn't got much family to speak of.

His parents were gone before he hit Kindergarten and his grandparents hung on just long enough to see him graduate high school. Animals have always been more his family than people.

He joined the military right out of high school, worked as a dog handler, only quit when his partner got blown up by an IED. That's when the offer came through of a job at the park.

Dinosaurs had always been a fascination for him, ever since he was a kid.

(Later she'll find he has all of Dr Grant's books, that he owns the blue-ray of their documentary and that once he'd made plans to sneak on to one of the islands just to catch a glimpse of them.)

She learns all of this in the first few days after the incident, when they can't seem to leave each other's sides and Claire's still not entirely sure she didn't really die leading that t-rex out to the fight.

It's understandable that he feels so strongly about them, that he worries about Blue, alone without a pack on an island full of predators twice her size. It's understandable that he doesn't want both islands blown up, cleansed.

Even Claire feels a little green at the thought.

"We can't let them do this, Claire," he says as he paces. "They can't just destroy an entire _species_ like this."

-

Here is the timeline, as Claire understands it:

The lawsuit against Masrani by the victims of the pterosaur attack is settled a month after the park closes for good. Zara's parents get a lump sum and there's a general agreement that the dinosaurs should be left in peace. Ian Malcolm goes on any talk show that'll have him to say _I told you so_ and rub it in their faces in increasingly creative ways and life goes on until the ALF gets involved.

Now, Claire doesn't have anything against animal rights activists, she thinks by and large, that animals should be afforded basic rights and even did a few interviews about using only cruelty free products, but what she does take issue with is the increasingly ridiculous things they do.

It starts like this: someone, somewhere, whether it be one of their lawyers or a former employee (and Claire has a few suspects) mentions in a forum post on Reddit or somewhere that leaving the dinosaurs alone is all very well and good but the mosasaurus will die without anyone to feed it.

And honestly, Claire feels a little guilty about that but it came down to the fact that there was no body of water on either island deep enough and big enough to hold the thing and realising it into the ocean wasn't really much of an option. So yeah, they left it in the tank. Set up an automatic feeder with a month's worth of food and a few people made vague promises to fly in and top it up but no one really held out hope for that.

The post bounces around in the recesses of the internet for a while and it's not until three college kids actually manage to go to the island with the intention of releasing it that news stations pick up on it. Claire's not entirely sure what the kids actually intended to do with a fifty-nine foot Indominus-eating monster but whatever it was it went wrong.

They send in a team and find one of the kids alive.

The two other's names get added to the long list of dinosaur related deaths (the one that's separate to dinosaur related deaths at Jurassic World/Park) and this is where things start to go wrong.

Dinosaur related deaths aren't exactly uncommon, they sit somewhere between shark attacks and lions (except for that one year a flock of pterosaurs used small Costa Rican villages as their hunting grounds.) Mostly, it's chalked up to human error, the pterosaurs are the only ones that can get off the island after all.

(Incidentally, it's something Claire used to get people to sign off on the park. Dinosaurs can't attack people if they're being controlled.

Or caged.)

The mother of one of the dead activists calls for the mosasaurus to be destroyed, it starts as a tearful plea on the morning news but by that evening it's a full blown movement and that's when the footage leaks.

Masrani had done a neat job of the clean up, of choosing what could and what could not be shown of the attack and before them InGen had been quick to seize any footage of dinosaur attacks. The public have seen the screaming tourists being pecked, being knocked over, they've seen the T.Rex rampaging through San Diego. But they haven't seen the grainy footage of a pteranodon snatching up a four year old girl, they haven't see Zara tossed about like a ragdoll.

They haven't seen the body cam footage of the Indominus. Not even Claire's seen that.

Anonymous claim responsibility for the hack and Claire misses all of this because her schedule back then was _work, eat, Owen, sleep._ Lather, rinse, repeat. Oh, and she had all her news feeds set to blacklist posts with the word "dinosaur" in them (at least until she stopped jerking awake from nightmares of _we need more teeth, we need more teeth, we need more teeth_.)

-

Half the world wants the Islands destroyed, the other half riots in protest of the notion.

"If it was a dog, it would have been destroyed," one of the activist's mothers says in a televised shouting match. Zara's mother beside her, tearful but stoic. (They have the same chin, Claire notices absently.) "There wouldn't be any debate on the matter. This creature - _monster_ \- has killed three people. _Three._ And that's only the ones we know about."

The crowd cheers.

The rep Masrani has sent is woefully under qualified, visibly sweating and stumbles over her words, "Well, I understand the Mrs Kellerman but - "

"It's not just me you need to address," Mrs Kellerman snaps. "It's not just my son that beast ate. It's her daughter too. And hers. And god knows how many others!"

The rep fake smiles, "Mrs Kellerman those are the _only_ fatalities the mososaurus was involved in, you can be sure - "

"Can we?" Zara's mother speaks up. "You and yours hid all those awful videos, you created that monster without informing the public. How can we trust anything you say?"

Claire shuts off the TV as the crowd cheers and closes her eyes.

She was just catching her breath.

Owen puts an arm around her shoulders, "You don't have to be involved in this, you know."

She looks at him, "Of course I do."

He's quiet for a moment and then, "Claire, if you're just doing this for me then - "

She cuts him off, thinking of that dying sauropod, that field of the dead and dying, she thinks of Gray and his stuffed triceratops and Owen stroking Blue's snout tenderly. She sighs, "I'm not doing it for you. Don't get too excited."

The phone rings.

It'll be Masrani, she knows, calling her in to testify.

"We better start building a defence then," she says and Owen smiles, just a little.

-

Before the park opens Claire visited the survivors of the original park. It was mostly a courtesy thing, they already had all the permits and signatures they needed to start building but it'd be good for publicity if they could get a few endorsements from people who had actually been there.

Tim Murphy was unsurprisingly the easiest.

Claire remembers how strange it had felt meeting him in the archives of the Natural History in London as a man a year or so younger than her, when in her mind he'd always been the scrawny kid covered in blood and dirt on the news.

He smiles when he meets her, extends a hand, "I'm afraid if you're here to offer me a ticket to your park, I'm going to have to decline," he says when she takes it. "The only dinosaurs I can stomach these days are the ones that come imbedded in rocks."

She laughs politely and he adds, "And the ones with feathers, of course. Maybe not emus though. Or cassowaries. Or any of them bigger then a swan, really."

Claire can't convince him to visit the park, can't even convince him that the park is a good idea.

"Look, if my grandpa taught me anything it's that some things just shouldn't be messed with," he says, with kind eyes that make Claire want to punch him. He's talking slow, almost patronising. Like she has no idea what she's getting herself into (and, because this is before Indominus was even a dream, she very much does understand, thank you very much.)

But she can't punch Tim Murphy anymore than she can be openly rude so instead she gives him her best smile and says: "But think about how excited you were the first time you saw a live dinosaur. Don't you think other children deserve that opportunity, Mr Murphy?"

He chuckles, eyes still kind, "Well, my kid thinks the greatest thing on earth right now would be to pet a tiger but I'm not going to let him do it. Sure, the spectacle would be great but I'm sorry, I just don't think the risk is worth it."

She leaves empty handed but Tim stays in touch, sends her a congratulations the day the park opens, sends her long rambles about the goings on in the world of palaeontology and Claire replies in a curt and business-like manner and doesn't ever, _ever_ face up to the odd bundle of warm feelings she has for him.

He calls her four days after the incident and there's a pregnant pause between the _I saw what happened on the news_ and the _are you okay? Are you really okay?_ where the _I told you so_ should fit but Tim's to polite to say that and Claire's grateful.

She tells him about Owen, about the helpless look in his eyes and Tim sighs and says, "I think it was easier for Lex than me."

(And Lex was easy too.

Graduated at seventeen from MIT and made a fortune tech, built a company to rival Apple. Retired early, spends most of her time now helping get girls into science and technology with grants and workshops and Ted Talks.

Her reply was curt and to the point and said, in a far more professional manner, _you must be fucking joking._ )

"She already thought they were monsters. She didn't think of them as wonderful or magnificent. I think it's easier for people like that."

Claire wants to tell Tim that it wasn't like that. She was the one who looked at them and didn't see danger, she was sure they could control them. They were only animals after all. Owen always saw the danger, the inevitability of it all. He may not have seen them as mindless monsters but he knew what he was dealing with. But Tim laughs before she can and says, "Maybe we should start a support group."

-

"There's no question that the pterosaurs pose a continuing threat to those living near the island," Nick Van Owen says on the Today Show. "But the fact of the matter is that they remain the only creatures that have the capability of leaving the island and travelling to the main land. To suggest otherwise is simply _ridiculous_."

Since his time on Isla Sorna Nick's styled himself as a dinosaur rights activist, mostly people write him off as some sort of social justice warrior but for some reason, lately, people have been listening to him.

Claire met him a few times, he lead the charge against her when they announced Jurassic World would be opening. Too bad for him by that point they already had all the permissions they needed.

"It's genocide, plain and simple," he announces. "There's no way anyone could justify destroying an _entire species_ over the actions of one, terrified, starving creature."

That's what people don't seem to get, there's been no official call for the destruction of the two islands. Yet anyway. At the moment it's only the mosasaurus but everyone knows that if they lose this case, it's only a matter of time.

"That man is such an idiot," Claire mutters. She's met him twice, once before the park opening, once after. Both encounters went poorly.

Owen grins as he knots his tie, "Nick's alright."

It's their first day of court and Claire, for some reason, feels sicker than she did six months ago. At least there's no chance of her ending up in jail this time, she's been officially cleared of any wrong doing.

"He led a _smear campaign_ against me, Owen."

"Well, in his defence you were kind of an uber bitch back then."

Claire fixes him with the kind of stare she usually reserves for bullying people into making donations or firing incompetents and Owen visibly flinches, "I mean you were a very strong personality which is no way a bad thing! It's actually a very sexy thing."

Claire would usually take the time to make him feel very, very sorry for that but right now she has more pressing matters to attend to.

-

They take a recess after the video of Zara's death is shown and Claire stumbles her way to the bathroom and dry heaves a few times.

She feels guilty, oh so guilty. Not just because she didn't stop to ask or worry or even realise she hadn't heard from her until Gray mentioned it. Not just because it was her mistake that let the Indominus out, that led to all this. But because this is how those mothers must feel and some part of her has always known but she's ignored it, hidden it under excuses.

_They shouldn't have been on the island in the first place. They shouldn't have gone anywhere near the tank. The whole place is a restricted area._

The mosasaurus shouldn't have existed in the first place.

It takes her a few minutes to realise that's she crying, that the weight on her chest isn't just grief and guilt and hopelessness but her heart racing, her breath coming in strangled little gasps.

She's gasping for breath and then there's a hand on her back, stroking back and forth, "Claire, breath Claire."

She turns into his touch, buries her face in his chest and all she can think to say is, "Owen, this is the ladies room."

He laughs, a deep comforting rumble, "Yeah, I know. Do you think we'll get in trouble?"

-

Their address leaks the second day of the trial and after two days of paparazzi lurking outside Claire caves and buys a new house.

It's bigger than their condo, four bedrooms and a sizable yard that Owen smirks at and says, "Now there's _no reason_ for us not to get a dog."

Karen, who's in town helping with the trial, and the boys move their stuff in the next day. They've been staying in a hotel for a month, spending most of their time at Claire's condo and even though it's a little too noisy and crowded for Claire's liking it's nice to have them so close.

They still got divorced, Karen and Scott. Gray and Zach's brush with death didn't change anything; the problem was never that they didn't love the boys.

Being here is the good for them, Claire thinks. It's summer and San Diego is much more fun than their quiet little town plus the boys love Owen and Owen loves them right back.

When Karen sees them playing she gets this sickening look in her eyes and shoots Claire a knowing look. It makes her want to scream.

She and Owen have talked about kids; neither of them are particularly keen but Karen will never, ever understand and Claire's tired of trying to make her.

She loves her nephews but she's still not found the desire to have any of her own.

And she does love them, even if Gray's continued obsession with dinosaurs baffles her. It's just her and him tonight, Karen's working late and Owen's taken Zach to a movie. She's had a long day, it was her turn to speak and she did so, cross examined for hours. The last thing she wants to do is think about dinosaurs anymore but Gray's insistent on watching the latest exclusive interview about the case.

It's Ian Malcolm and Alan Grant, being interviewed together for the first time since the original park. Word is they hate each other, but Claire's always suspected that most of the rumoured animosity has been fabricated by the press.

She's met them both of course, Ian Malcolm wasn't nearly as smart as he thought he was and Alan Grant smiled at her in a sad pitying way. She didn't like either of them much.

There still hasn't been an official call for the destruction of the two islands but it's all anyone's been talking about for the past month. All anyone in power will say is that they're waiting to see how the trial pans out.

They all know it's coming.

"But isn't it true, Dr Grant, that some of the carnivorous dinosaurs on the islands are adept swimmers?" the host asks. "I have here two papers written by your assistant, Dr Brennan, on the baryonyx and the spinosaurus?"

Dr Grant all but rolls his eyes, "While it's true that both of dinosaurs are very comfortable in the water it's extremely unlikely that either of them could swim the length to shore."

"Even if it did," Dr Malcolm adds, "With the amount of armed patrols in the area now I don't fancy its chances of making it to shore intact."

"So neither of you think the dinosaurs pose any threat whatsoever?"

"I think what's happened in the last few years has proved that they're only a threat when people disturb them," Dr Malcolm says.

Claire switches off mentally as Dr Grant launches into a discussion of how stable the dinosaur food web is and how if left to their own devices, like they had been before Masrani got hold of them, they'd pose no risk.

She's quite happily falling asleep when Gray (who has at some point sprawled across her like a cat) tugs at her sleeve, "Aunt Claire?"

She looks down at him blearily, "Yes?"

"Do you think they'll really kill them all?"

Claire yawns, "No Gray, we won't let them."

He frowns, biting his lower lip just like Karen used to do when they were kids. "Those people they interviewed after Dr Grant were so mad though. I don't get it. It wasn't the dinosaurs fault, don't they get that?"

"Some people don't see it that way," Claire says softly. "They're frightened too, Gray. Don't you get frightened after what happened at the park?"

Gray's quiet for a long time. When they first got back Karen had both boys talk to a therapist for a month or so and while Zach's all bravado Claire's always thought Gray came back a little less vibrant.

"Sometimes," he whispers. "You know, when me and Zach were trapped in the gyrosphere, I keep thinking what if it got us. What if Zach got out and - " He clams up, squeezes his mouth shut tight. Claire lets it slide.

"Do you get scared, Aunt Claire?"

She thinks she's probably supposed to say no, that's what Karen would do. Say, _no dear, it's over now and we're all safe. It's never going to happen again, you know that right?_ But Claire's never really been a fan of lying to kids.

( _The park is one hundred percent safe; you're no more likely to get hurt here then at Disneyland!_ )

"All the time, Gray," she says, a little hollowly.

-

The next day it's Sarah Hardings turn on the stand.

Claire likes Sarah. She's one of the few survivors who agreed to come to the park, she did a lot of the photography for their brochures and promos, helped her dad out in the veterinary unit.

Sarah's speaks about her observation of family groups on the island, about the lengths the T-Rex parents went to to get their child back. It doesn't have much to do with the mosasaur, it's more about establishing dinosaurs as emotional beings and for the most part it seems to work.

Claire has lunch with her and they talk about anything but dinosaurs (except everything ends up being about dinosaurs.) Claire talks about Owen's need for a dog (to fill the hole left by his raptor pack), Sarah talks about how Kelly Malcolm pulled out of the world gym championships (because she'd had a sudden resurgence of night terrors related to raptors.)

Claire hopes that one day her life won't be overshadowed by overgrown lizards, that one day she'll have a day where teeth and scales aren't in her thoughts at all but looking at her predecessors, it's not likely.

It's Billy Brennan's turn tomorrow.

He worked at the park for a while too, consulted on the dietary requirements and habitats, worked mostly with the herbivores and had a great time pointing out the ways the InGen scientists had changed the species they brought back to life. He'd been sweet and headstrong and earnest and it had been going well until a pteradon escaped.

It had been a small one, barely a hatchling Claire had been told but it had been enough and Billy had stumbled, pale faced, to her office and handed in her resignation.

"We should have a meet up or something," Sarah says. "You know, all of us survivors."

"You know, Tim Murphy suggested the same thing to me a few months ago."

"He did?"

"Well, he suggested a support group rather than a meet up."

Sarah laughs, "Yeah, we could probably do with one of those too."

"The press would have a field day," Claire smiles. "Can you imagine? They'd probably think we were plotting something."

Sarah winks.

-

It occurs to Claire midway through the media circus of trial that Dr Wu has been conspicuously absent from the procedures. In fact, she hasn't heard from him since the park closed.

She double checks the records as soon as she can, just to verify that he's not listed as dead or missing (that she hasn't completely forgotten about another colleague) but no, he's still listed as an employee of InGen. Still alive.

No one seems to know anything about his whereabouts. No one else seems to concerned either and Claire listens to InGen's latest spokesman propose building a new enclosure on the island with a renewable food supply for the mosasaur with a growing sense of dread.

Owen takes her seriously, slams the glass he's holding down hard enough to crack it and swears, "What the fuck are those sons of bitches up to now?"

"A weapons program?" Claire suggests. It seems the most likely scenario.

The most terrifying scenario.

"We have to stop them," Owen snaps. "There's got to be something we can do - they can't just - "

Claire puts a hand on his arm, gentling, steadying, "Owen, let's focus on one thing at a time. We can't do anything to stop InGen, we don't even know if that's what they're planning."

Owen doesn't let it go, stays up every night for a week trying to find out what InGens up to. It's only when Gray not so quietly asks if he's tried sleeping pills to keep away the nightmares because _being on the computer so long is bad for your eyes, Owen,_ that he starts keeping more reasonable researching hours.

Claire tries to keep her focus on the mosasaur.

She calls Tim and asks if he still has an in with InGen but he doesn't, Hammonds nephew made sure of that before the San Diego incident. She mentions it to Sarah in an email who must mention it to Nick Van Owen because she ends up with an email from him reminding her that his criminal skills aren't only limited to breaking into testing laboratories and freeing dinosaurs from cages.

She seriously considers forwarding it to someone with the authority to haul him off to jail for a week or two just because doesn't (and Owen tells her he's proud of her later when she instead forwards it to him with the message: _be careful._ )

-

The trial ends with a ruling that the activists were to blame for their own death. It's a bittersweet ruling and the court agrees to let InGen go back to Nublar and build a new enclosure for it.

Claire leaves the courtroom feeling sicker than when she first entered it with Owen seething beside her. The pro-dinosaur supporters outside are cheering and Claire wants to yell at them to stop. She walks past Zara's mother on her way out, avoids her gaze completely.

Sarah catches up to them on the way to the car, "Hey!" she's beaming, cheeks a little flushed. "Celebratory drinks? Come on, I've got a couple of old friends coming too," she adds with a wink.

Owen's arm tightens around Claire's shoulder and he starts to say, "Thanks for the offer, Dr. Harding but we should - "

Sarah wouldn't know subtlety if it were an eighteen foot tall reptile hell bent on eating her and Claire doesn't really feel up to socialising beyond Owen but it'd do him good, she thinks. He's not as connected as she is, sure he's got Barry to talk to but Barry's somewhere in Brazil without internet right now so outside of her and the boys he's been mostly dealing on his own.

"We'd love to come," Claire cuts Owen off.

"Excellent!" Sarah crows, "I'll text you the details. You should bring the boys if you can!" And then she's gone and Owen's staring after her.

"Why would she want us to bring the boys?" he asks.

Claire shrugs innocently, "She's mad, Owen. Who knows."

-

Claire kind of hopes this doesn't become a thing.

It's awkward at first because most of the room don't know each other and over half the room have grudges against someone else present. Nick has probably been warned by Sarah to be on his best behaviour but that doesn't make it any less awkward and Ian and Sarah had a particularly messy break up so there's that to contend with.

Plus there's the fact the most of them, at some point in their lives, have thought the worst of her. She's expecting them to be cold towards her but even though Dr Grant seems to still have a bit of animosity towards her everyone else seems fine with it.

Lex doesn't come because she's too busy and Ellie Sattler's there and Claire's been dreading meeting her since she watched a particularly passionate TedTalk she did on dextinction back before the park opened.

It doesn't go _horribly._

Zach doesn't come because he's off with his latest girlfriend but Gray tags along and attaches himself to Tim almost instantly. Owen goes starry-eyed over Dr Grant and spends most of the evening talking to Billy and Eric Kirby about raptors and their communication.

Claire faces her fears and talks to Dr Sattler who turns out to be one of the nicest people Claire's ever met. She talks to Sarah and Kelly and Dr Malcolm is the only one who says _I told you so_ but he does so light-heartedly and Claire lets it slide.

It's actually kind of nice after a while.

They talk about the nice parts of their experiences with dinosaurs and Gray interrogates everyone about their favourites and why and how and who they think would win between a t-rex and a spinosaurus.

(The answer is spinosaurus, as both Alan and Billy tell Gray.)

It hits 11pm before Claire knows and Karen sends her a stream of increasingly worried texts because Karen tends to panic whenever anyone's out of communication for more than a few hours.

And okay, maybe Claire hopes this becomes a thing because she realises, she doesn't really want to leave.

Owen's ducked out to talk to Nick so it's Tim who helps her bundle a tired Gray back into the car.

"So that was nice," she admits.

Tim smiles, "I told you, a support group was always what we needed. Sarah's already talking about meeting up again in a few months."

He shuts the car door behind Gray and after checking he's asleep he looks over at her, "Nick and Owen are snooping around InGen." he says, "You really think they're up to something?"

"They bred Indominus to be a weapon, Tim," she says. _They bred Indominus to be a weapon and I let it happen. I didn't stop them. I didn't want to see it._ "Doctor Wu is missing and InGen still have the rights to any genetic material from the parks."

Tim takes a steadying breath, "Guess we'll have to do something about that then."

"It'll be dangerous," Claire warns.

"I feel like once you've faced down a pack of raptors and tyrannosaurus-rex danger kind of just isn't much of a deterrent," Tim says with a weak smile.

Claire laughs because absurdly, he's right. He hugs her goodbye as Owen reaches them and says, "Oh, I may have promised to give Gray a tour around the museum archives next month, could you maybe clear that with his mother for me?"

Claire promises she will and he and Owen shake hands.

"Have fun?" she asks, as she starts the engine.

Owen nods absentmindedly, "Nick has intel on an InGen facility in Panama. Intel says they might have taken the embryos from the lab there." He puts a gentle hand on her arm, "Are you sure you want to do this?"

Claire shakes her head, "No. But we should, right?"

Owen nods, "Right."


End file.
